Reasons To Live
by QueenOfTheRing
Summary: Contains spoilers! Something I wrote when I was bored about Dís, daughter of Thraín, sister of Thorin, mother of Fíli and Kíli, at the funeral of her brother and sons. Dís/Bard in the end I'm sorry.


**Hello, this is my first story I post on fanfiction so reviews are welcomes, I would love to get some tips, but be nice :)  
****I wrote this story a couple of months ago and because of my dear friend I decided to also create an account on this site. ****It also took some time to translate this story because I wrote it at first for myself in my own language. If there are some words that don't excist or another thing that's wrong with the language please let me know and I will correct.  
****I originally planned just to write about the funeral but the idea with Bard popped into my head and I just did it :p  
But this is not how I see Dís' life went, it's just a thing I made because I was bored.****I do not own anything, all rights belong to J.R.R Tolkien and Peter Jackson for Tauriel. ****btw, does someone know how I can put those chapters apart, you know what I mean?**

**With all that being said (thanks if you read it btw), I really hope you enjoy it!**  


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Prologue:  
She was sitting in the corner looking expressionless before her. She had made herself small and had been waiting for the sun to rise. The sun was there, but somewhere behind an icy white and gray sky. No sunrise will ever be the same again, she thought. Everything is different. Although she'd prefer to stay and sit in the corner for the rest of her live, she knew that that wasn't an option. She stares at the chair on the other side of the room, where a black dress lay on. The dress is as raven black as her hair and the sleeves of the dress were getting wider. The bottom was a bit wide and at the top of her dress by her collar, there was a dark brown stone in a golden shell. She stands up and walks to the dress, which she slowly strokes. Today is the day. With tears in her eyes she puts on the mourning dress to get ready for the funeral of her beloved sons and brother.

Chapter 1:  
While Dís is walking out her chamber, she notices that the atmosphere in the rest of the Lonely Mountain as cold and airless is as in her own room. She is walking dazed through the halls, with her head in a complete different place, her mind burying in the past.

Just in time she stops walking to not suddenly bump into another dwarf. She recognises the dwarf before her immediately; it was one of the very few friends she has left.

'I'm sorry, Balin.' She immediately says, with a shamed face. But Balin looks and her friendly and sad. She looks into his eyes and sees her own pain and sorrow reflected in it.

'You don't have to apologise, Dís. No one's head is here today. I don't think you'd feel any better, but did you sleep a bit?' he asked, although she sees that he already knows the answere. 'No, and as I can see you neither. But it doesn't matter, I don't want to sleep, even if I could. The only thing I can think about are my children and my foolish brother.'

Balin lays her hand on her shoulder and tries to smile comfortly.

'May I accompany you to the eating Hall, princess Dís?'

She looks at him sadly and pinches in his hand a bit. 'Thank you for the offer, Balin. But I can get nothing down my throat and honestly I'm not hungry at all, and I'm getting sick of everyone who's coming to me to say how much they're sorry. They can't help it they're dead, so they don't own me an apology.' She says in a soft but sweet voice. Luckily Balin nods understandable. 'Of course, lassie. If you need anything, just say so. But mind that you eat and drink enough, because nobody wants you to faint.'

She smiles sad before she softly pinches his hand again and walks away. As soon after she turned around the corner and out of sight of Balin, she is running as fast as she can through the halls. She can't do this, she really cannot do this. She sniffs her nose and sweeps it along her sleeve, why would she care if it gets dirty? She is running and running until she had no idea anymore where she is. She already lost her father, grandfather, mother, brother and husband. The only ones she had left were Thorin, Fíli and Kíli. And now they are gone too.

Disappeared forever, lost, never here again. With that thought she sinks on the floor and cries so much that is surprises her she still has tears left. Nobody knows exactly how long she has been crying there and Dís is totally disorientated. In this moment, she didn't know what time it was, where she is on this world or even how she looked. The only thing that she knows is that she has lost her sons and brother forever and that they never would come back.

This didn't had to happen, she thought. Never, as long as they had stayed at home.

She already heard the news a long ago, but she still felt the same pain as in the beginning, and it was almost a month later now. She had arrived yesterday evening at a very late hour, met the remaining Company again, visited the dead body's of her siblings and went crying, squeaking and screaming to her room like a three year-old child who doesn't get what he wants. She dries her eyes with her sleeves, which she already knew wouldn't make the day, and stands up. She was only ten when Smaug conquered Erebor so she didn't know where all the halls went to and where they were. In the early days she walked here with Thorin and Frerin, who helped her to point out the way. But now… she slapped herself in her face to not sink onto the floor again and cry her eyes out until it was dark. She had to focus and find the way back. She could go left or right, but she didn't know which way she came from. She chooses the right side and immediately turns left. It was a maze of halls in here, but she is confident that she will find her way out. Not because dwarves have a great sense of direction, but because Thorin and Frerin were still somewhere to lead her in the right direction.

She didn't think about: ''what side would they have chosen?'' because she knew it wouldn't help. She pretends that they are both still walking with her and that she would be lead to the eating Hall between them. After walking for a while, she wondered how fan she'd run.

Of course, she was running then and now she is walking quietly, but she was walking for a while now. But she is confident in her brothers, and she swells of pride when she noticed a familiar hall. She grasps the air like it were the hand of her brothers and runs through the halls like she always used to do. Eventually she stops still when she is standing before the eating Hall. They succeeded! She could only just prevent herself from saying ''thank you'' out loud, because it was quite busy and it will certainly notice if she would say ''thank you'' to the sky.

Instead of that she pinched herself in her own fists and send a ''thank you'' to Mahal.

She looks around in the crowd, hoping she could find Balin again. She wants to know what time it is and above all she wants to say goodbye to her dead family. Because she is the mother and sister of the fallen, she could say goodbye to them all on her own.

And that is certainly something she wants to do, but she wants that Balin is walking with her to the room. Why she didn't know either, it just felt good. She is looking around and her eyes catch a familiar person. 'Where is Balin?' she asks in Khûzdul.

'He just left to the gate to receive the visitors for the funeral.'

She is looking with a not-understanding face to the dwarf. Receive people for the funeral? Then she nods and runs away again, this time to the gate outside. Indeed, there is Balin receiving people. She is running to him and stops right next to him. He is standing opposite a man she doesn't know, but he looks poor. In contrast to this man, behind him is standing an ever taller man, or an elf actually, who is looking very well and his clothes make him look wealthy. She recognises him and is reasonably surprised that he is here. But, she heard story's about the battle of five armies, and knows that he had fought along.

'King Thranduil.' She says with a cool nod. Thranduil gives a little nod back. 'Princess Dís.'

She looks at the man before her. 'And who are you?' the man opens his mouth but Balin answers before him. 'This is Bard, a man of Lake-town. He killed Smaug.'

The man, Bard apparently, shuts his mouth and she is looking at him with big eyes, but quickly recovers into her royal attitude again. For a moment she doesn't know what to say, so she looks at him and says: 'Thank you.' This causes that for a moment all three man are looking at her but Balin quickly takes the word again. 'Is there something, Dís? Why have you come?' She turns to Balin. 'Nothing, nothing special.' She quickly informs him.

'But if you are not to busy, I wondered if you would walk with me to eh… you know.'

Balin looks pitiful at her and luckily nods his head. She feels relieved and tries to smile, although it doesn't work at all. 'Of course, Dís.' He is calling a couple of dwarfs to receive the people, or to get them out, and leaves Bard and Thranduil under their care.

Together they're walking away, back inside to the room where the corpses are.

She meanwhile had found out that the bodies were already put in coffins, but that the covers were not closed yet. She had the idea that the coffins would only make it more difficult, but what could she do about it? 'Thank you for walking with me, Balin. I'll be fine from here. You're a good friend.' She pulls him into an embrace, happy with the amount of friendship Balin has got for her. She pulls herself back from the embrace and looks into his encouraging eyes. She lays her hand on his cheek and walks inside.

Chapter 2:  
She immediately notices the three coffins and her heart is skipping a few beats. Laborious she pulls herself from the door and walks up to the coffins. She stops at the first one where her brother lies, his face looked peaceful but she didn't think it was so peaceful. He is dead.

She lies her hand on his cheek, from experience knowing how cold it would be. The first time she had shrunk together but now she had said goodbye to so many died dwarfs, family, friends, or just dwarfs that belonged to her folk, that she didn't move a muscle.

His eyes were closed and she looks at him with a stare full of respect, despite of everything she had called him a fool. A fool he was, but nevertheless she loves him. She thought about the times that they and Frerin, who died long ago but still is there in heart and mind, wandered in the halls of Erebor. How he watched them when Smaug overtook Erebor. That she fell crying into his arm when Frerin, father and grandfather had died. How much she had shone to him on her wedding day, or when Fíli and Kíli were born. That she had almost died by the lost of her husband and he brought her back up again. Who is taking her back up now, when he is dead? She kisses his forehead and whispers into his ear: 'Farewell, Thorin.'

A tear falls onto his cheek and she sweeps it away, walking to the next coffin where her eldest son lies in with his braided blond hair and beard, him who she loves so much.

'Oh, Fíli.' She mumbles while she strikes the hair out of his face. He looked so much like her husband that she sometimes cried if she just looked at him. But now she is looking at him and cries because he is dead, along with his brother, fighting to protect his uncle she heard.

She admires his bravery and loyalty he had always showed to his family. It was 64 years ago she had held him for the first time, and how she had shone. Now he is lying here, almost 65 year on, in a coffin with his mother bent over him. She sees his smiling face again, how he sworn his loyalty to Kíli at the birth of his younger brother that he had loved so much. Live together, die together. She gives his forehead a kiss and walks on to the last coffin where in the corpse of her youngest son lay in. In contrast of Fíli he had dark brown hair and almost no beard which shown how young he actually was. All three of them died way to young, especially her sons. Oh Mahal, why them? Why her sons? She feels that her hand takes Kíli's and pinches it. How reckless he had been, but yet so sweet and innocent, although Kíli didn't agree with her on that point. She suddenly feels something inside his pocket. She picks up the object but can't see anything since the tears had blurred her vision. It is the talisman she had given to him before he went on this Quest, to promise him that he would come back to her.

The promise had not been for filled but instead of getting sad and start shouting, she welled up with pride again. He never forgot his promise, she thought affected. It's just an impossible promise, because you can't promise it. But yet he had fought for it. He didn't protect only his own brother but also his mother's, and that's how he had died. To young, but with so much loyalty that her heart was fully swelled up. She put the stone back in his pocket and let her hand rest on it. She thinks about his life, and how unfair it had been that he had known his father for such a short time. But now he is resting with him again, and with Frerin, Thorin and Fíli. His laughing face becomes before her eyes and with that sight she kisses him on his forehead. She had to remember how they used to be. Honest, proud, loyal and combative.

Now they might be corpses, but they weren't always like that, so she wouldn't remember them like that. She will remember them as the dwarfs they once were and who had always been there for her when she needed them. She gives a deep sigh, strikes Kíli's face once more and walks out the door without looking back one more time. Balin was waiting a bit further away and she walks to him with a weak smile on her face. He indeed looks a bit surprised when he sees her walking up to him like that, he had probably thought she would come out of the room more broken. She had thought the same thing herself, but although she might look less broken, she still was as broken as before. 'I'm ready.' She says and she grabs his hand again. 'Alright then,' He answered. 'Let's go outside, the rest is already there.'

She nods and on they're way out they pass a couple of man whom had come to pick up the coffins. As soon as they're outside the cold hits her eyes and nose, what causes her watery eyes and a runny nose. Well, what does it matter, she thinks. It would only have take another minute to get them.

Balin and Dís are standing the closest to the graves along with the rest of the Company.

After a while the dwarfs come outside. A coffin is each carried along by four dwarves. Dís bites on her lips to not start crying already and feels that Balin pinches in her hand.

For the first time she notices the Hobbit and wizard but she doesn't pay much attention to them. The only thing she could think about at the moment were the dwarves in the coffins.

Trembling and with watery eyes she watched how the coffins were set into their graves, how Thranduil put the Arkenstone onto Thorin's chest, how some dwarves gave speeches.

She let it all come over her, because she couldn't do anything else and neither think about anything else. She feels a comforting hand on her shoulder, although she doesn't know whose.

She allows the hand to stay there because it really comforts her. Everything ends, and eventually also the funeral. The humans, elves and dwarves slowly go away, apart for some.

The company is still there, Thranduil and two other elves, Bard, and naturally Dís.

She kneels at the graves of her brother and sons and holds the handkerchief firm against her face. Someone kneels next to her and first she thinks it's Balin but when she looks again she sees it's the wizard. Gandalf, she thought. He whispers something in her ears where by she closes her eyes, and when she opens them see sees the graves before her again, but is suddenly seemed like the funeral was yesterday. She looks up at the wizard, with a small crooked smile, although her bottom lip is still trembling and her vision is still blurred because of her tears. 'Thank you' she whispers back. With help of Gandalf she gets back up and turned her back to the graves. 'Thank you for all your help.' She doesn't look at somebody directly in the eyes because she was talking to everybody here, who had al fought so bravely.

She nods and walks past them. She walks away to let them say goodbye and to get some fresh air since it seemed like she was stuffed with all of them in a small place while she had claustrophobia. She doesn't walk back to the Lonely Mountain as she wanted to do at first, but just goes somewhere. She walks to the stables next to the mountain. She looks at the meadow and the dark sky. If she hurried the horses could go outside before it starts to rain.

She opens the doors of the stables and let the horses gallop away to let them stretch their legs.

For a dwarf, she loved animals more than was common for her folk. She was the only one with two horses. She coughs when she walks into the stables because all the straw had been stewing up. She picks two bags made of ropes and takes them to the shed next to the stables. She was taken over by the smell when she opened the door, probably because this was the first time in probably almost a hundred years that that door was opened again. Well, the second time actually, because the door was opened before the put fresh hay in the shed for the horses. The stables were usually only used for travellers who came to visit Erebor or royal occasions, but now it was very useful because when Smaug took over Erebor, more dwarfs bought horses. She begins with filling the bags with hay, but when she finishes the first one she immediately takes the opportunity to get out of the smell to hang the first one already.

She hopes being busy takes her mind of the things that happened, but that was impossible. With a sigh she walks back to the shed to fill the second bag. When she is finished, she quickly locks the door again and decides to send some people here to get rid of that horrid smell. Although she doesn't know how either, because dwarfs weren't famous for their lovely smelling halls or hygiene. She walked back to the stables to hang up the second back when she suddenly heard a voice. 'My condolences, Dís.' She doesn't recognise the voice and neither she did see someone. Startled she looks around her and sees someone leaning against the fence of the meadow. It is Bard the bowman. Again she doesn't know what to see because she hadn't heard or seen him at all, but then she says: 'Thank you. Again.'

She walks back to the stable to hang up the second bag and she can hear him coming this way.

'How did you know I was here?' she wonders while she tight up the bag.

'I saw you walking this way and I wondered if you were alright. If you know what I mean.'

She looks at him for a moment and nods. 'I'm okay. I've lost family before. You would expect that it gets heavier every time, and so it is, but on the other hand it almost looks like a habit. But it isn't.' The last sentence she whispers, more to herself than to him.

'You already feel so empty by the first one who dies that you think there isn't any more space left that can get empty. And yet that isn't true.' He says with a soft voice and a distant look.

At first she nods like the were talking about food, but then she looks at him. 'Yes…' It is quiet for a moment before she speaks again. 'Who did you lose?' she asks with a soft voice.

'My wife. She was beautiful. But it is a long time ago, and yet the emptiness feels as big as first like there's nothing that can fill it. I have three children who fill the gap, but it's still there, because no one can replace her.' She looks at him with a look full of pity, but then he continues: 'I know that you have lost you husband as well, both brothers, both sons, both parents and your grandfather. I can't imagine how that emptiness must feel.' Her jaw is tight while she nods. 'Way to big.' She admits. Actually it's not admitting, because she looks like she's dead as well, and she also sounds like that. She walks out the stable to the meadow, and sits on the fence. 'And if there's no one anymore who can fill that emptiness, what point is it to live?' Bard looks at her sad, but also a bit distrusting. What was she up to? 'That's what I said to Thorin when my husband died. He showed me that there were many more thing to live for. I discovered that Fíli and Kíli are my life because of him, and he was also a reason to live.

Although he can be a fool sometimes, I love him so very much and he shouldn't have died. Fíli and Kíli are way to young to die. But your wife probably was too, wasn't she? But now that they are gone, I don't think I can find a reason, even a very small one, to let me want to live.' She sighs and closes her eyes. His eyes get dark of sadness. 'Yes, she was too young to die. She died at the birth of our youngest daughter. Not that I blame my daughter, but I can't stop thinking about her, and how far away she is from me now. But I will have to take care of my children, because they only have each other and me. And I love them.' He sees how much she trembles, obviously of sorrow. He takes her arm to keep it still. 'And if I may, I will be happy to help you to find that one reason for you to stay alive, because I'm sure that there's still one out there.' He says while the first raindrops fall out of the sky. She shrugs but looks at his hand for a moment. 'I don't think that I can find another reason, Bard. I've only lived in terrible times. That's not fully true, I have known many happy times, and those memories mean everything to me. But I can't live with just some memories to keep me alive. I don't want to spent the whole day thinking about the past to keep myself happy. There will be a moment that my mind starts wondering to horrible and unhappy memories and it will drive me crazy. But if you want to help, you can help me put those horses back in their stable. It starts to rain harder and I don't fancy brushing wet horses to get them dry again.'

It was weird how she went from such a deep and sensitive subject to something as getting horses inside their stables, but she could really use some help and she didn't like doing it.

Luckily Bard nods and she jumps of the fence, quite flexible for someone who's 180 in a difficult time. Bard follows her and together they get the horses – well, that's not true, pony's – back inside, while it starts raining even harder. The time that all the horses were inside, it was raining really very hard and her dress and hair were more black, if that was possible.

'Thank you. Only this one is very wet, so if we quickly brush together, we can get out here again as soon as possible. If you want to, of course. Don't you have to get back to your children?' she suddenly realises. 'Don't worry, they're taking after well. I'll help you.'

He picks up a brush and starts brushing the pony, so she does the same thing. Together they clean the pony, provide them all with blankets, and closes the doors behind them.

'Now start running very quickly, then we maybe can get inside before we are completely soaked.' She says. Unfortunately, she was really _very_ wrong. The two persons crashed into Erebor, completely soaked and trembling of the cold rain with raindrops dripping of their hair and clothing. 'We should've run faster.' She complains, although she didn't care that she was completely soaked. What would the Company must have gone through?

'I can tell you, Lady Dís, that if we were as fast as an arrow we still would be soaked.' Bard answers.

Probably yes, she thought.

Epilogue:  
A month later Dís and Bard were walking through the halls of Erebor. Daín was king, but nothing had been taken away from Dís. She is still the princess of Erebor, although she didn't want to be spoken to with that title, because it reminds her to much of her deceased brother.

She was actually still thinking about him all the time, even a month later. But Bard had kept himself to his word and helped her finding reasons to stay alive. It were only very small thing, but Bard did whatever he could to not let Dís sob away in her loss. One evening she had really almost slipped away from grief, because she hadn't eaten of drink anything since the day before the funeral and she nests herself in her grief. Bard had entered her room and found her in the corner, still in her black dress which she refused to take of because it is the only fully black dress she had, lying half dead and refusing to do anything at all. He convinced her to eat and drink something, and to find reasons together to live for. For the first time she wasn't wearing her completely black dress anymore, although this one had still quit a lot of black in it. But is was already one month pas the funeral and the only time she changed her dress was for sleeping clothes. Now she was wearing a lot of black and dark blue, but Bard sees it as an slight improvement. Not many had talked to Dís after the funeral, because she didn't want to talk to anybody. Only the ones who had stayed at her brother's and sons' grave she wanted to talk to. She met Legolas and Tauriel, who she often had said 'Thank you' to for saving her youngest son a while ago. Everybody went back to where they had come from, only Bard had stayed for a little longer. He often came back, but sometimes he stayed a while longer with his children. 'As it should be.' She had told him with a little smile when he came to apologise that he was away for such a long time. Now they were walking together in the halls of Erebor, and they stopped with a vase filled with flowers, which made Bard very surprised to see that in a dwarf Kingdom. 'Flowers?' he asks surprised while he points at the vase. And for the first he saw Dís laughing, really laughing, something she hadn't done since the funeral, or actually already a long time before that. 'You should see really the look on you face, you look so surprised!' she grins. 'I put them there, I like flowers.' She is laughing even harder now. 'Oh, you take that look off your face!' He tried to not look so surprised, although that's not very easy. A dwarf who likes flowers? He should've picked her some flowers once, he thought.

'That's a reason to live for, isn't it? Even though it's just a small one. Flowers are a reason for me. Their smell, how they look. They often come back every year. Spring is coming, and to be honest, I can't wait! I know that they're up there, looking down at me. Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, Frerin, my husband, parents and grandpa.' She says while she looks from him to the air.

He smiles. 'Yes, that's a reason to live.' He says with a soft voice. He puts two fingers under her chin and now her eyes are looking right into his. 'Can I also be a reason to live for you?' he asks. She takes a step forward so she's standing really close to him. 'You? You are for me the biggest reason to live.'

THE END.


End file.
